Growing Up
by Nyeerg
Summary: Jim Kirk was a lot of things- but growing up, he was mostly just a pain in Riverside's neck.


Jim Kirk was a lot of things. He was hardheaded, impulsive, emotional- and logical, methodic, to-the-point.

But before he was the Captain of the Enterprise, the savior of the Federation, or even Cadet Kirk, genius-and-asshole-extraordinaire, he was Winona's brat son, scourge of Riverside and the bane of teachers and lawkeepers alike. He raced motorcycles, cars, hovercars, the odd tractor- anything he could get his hands on and modify. He skipped school and aced his tests, and drove his mother and the local law enforcement up the wall.

Jim Kirk was a slut, an annoyance, and a general bother that on most days, the townspeople felt they could do without.

Occasionally he managed to redeem himself, if only until the next time he pulled a stunt that got Winona dragged out of work or bed to come down to the station.

At first, after the panic in San Francisco with the drill and the Nerada and the crazed Romulan, when the news reached Riverside that one James T. Kirk was the man responsible for saving their lives, they all said, "James T. Kirk? Not ours, surely, our James T. Kirk isn't capable of something like _that_," and went on with their business.

* * *

**Ten Years Old**

A banging on the door dragged Winona out of a dead sleep.

"WINONA!"

She startled fully awake, and sat up. The banging on the door ceased for a moment, and she called out, "Just a minute!" She stood, and glanced down at the couch, where she had passed out a few hours earlier. How had she managed to fall asleep? She sighed; apparently the newest batch of pills were as ineffective as the last.

She crossed through the cluttered kitchen to get to the door, where she found Sheriff Henke and her youngest son. The sheriff had Jimmy by the arm, and both of them had scowls dark enough to create a black hole.

"Sheriff," Winona said, tiredly. It had been nearly two weeks since the last time somebody had dragged Jimmy home; she should have been expecting it. "Come in." She opened the door, and the sheriff shoved Jimmy forward. The boy shuffled into the kitchen, head down, arms crossed. Sheriff Henke followed him in, and rested one hand on his handcuffs. Winona knew it was habit, but the movement still sent a tremor through her. Was it possible, one day, that Jimmy could be capable of doing something so bad that he _had_ to be put in handcuffs? "What happened?" Mentally, she tacked 'this time' onto it, but that would do nothing but serve to infuriate the ten year old even further.

"He was vandalizing Mrs. Brown's fence," Henke said.

"With what?" They both looked down at the blonde boy, but he stared angrily at the floor.

"A set of markers. I caught him at it on my rounds."

Winona sighed, and reached out to touch Jimmy's shoulder. He jerked away from her, then left the kitchen at a run and thumped up the stairs. A few seconds after, a door slammed upstairs, and Winona winced.

"I'll send him over with paint tomorrow to cover it up. Will there be a fine?" Winona hoped not; even with the widow's stipend from Starfleet, it was hard. The house was nearly falling down around her, and Jimmy's uncle Frank wasn't much help. He did was he could, bless him, but he had a job and a life of his own, and she just couldn't bear to ask any more of him.

"Not this time, but if it happens again…" The sheriff tossed a glance at the ceiling, but Jimmy was silent in his room.

"It won't," Winona promised. If Jimmy was good at anything, it was remembering which 'crimes' he'd committed, and he was pretty good about only doing something once. Thankfully Frank had only had George's Corvette, and not the motorcycle they had been saving for Sam, or else she feared the quarry incident would have been repeated, regardless of the trouble Jimmy had gotten in.

"Good day, Winona," Sheriff Henke said. He tipped his hat, and she smiled wearily. At least he didn't hold Jimmy's actions against her. Not many of the townsfolk did, not once they'd come across Jimmy and discovered for themselves what a handful he was. It'd only gotten worse since the Corvette, unfortunately.

"Good day, Mr. Henke."

A few hours later, after Winona fixed dinner and was ignored by Jimmy, still in his room, she shook her head and went upstairs.

She knocked on his door, decorated with Starfleet stickers and various Keep-Out signs, and when there was no answer (not that she had expected one), she turned the knob and eased the door open.

Jimmy was sitting on his bed, hanging half out of the window. He half-turned to glance at her when she entered, then turned back to staring out at the flat Iowa plains and ignoring her.

"Jimmy, you can't go around drawing on peoples' fences. You know that." She stood in the doorframe, arms hugging herself. Jimmy didn't say anything. He didn't even acknowledge that she'd said anything. "Tomorrow, I'll give you money to go get paint, and then you need to go fix Mrs. Brown's fence. Okay?"

Jimmy shrugged.

"Dinner's on the stove if you're hungry," she tried. She knew he must be; he hadn't shown up for lunch, and she didn't remember him taking anything with him when he left that morning, but he shrugged again.

Winona sighed, and left him to his silence.

Later that night, as she lay awake in bed, unable to sleep, she heard the unmistakable sound of the stairs creaking. She sat up and slipped on her slippers, but then she heard the ancient fridge groan open (she reminded herself to oil the hinges) and she relaxed. A few minutes later, the stairs creaked again and Jimmy's door closed with a snap.

* * *

**Twelve Years Old**

Jeff Henke had just sat down in his old recliner and was about to take a drink of his freshly brewed, junior-police-officer-free coffee, when a quiet knock sounded at his front door. He stared at the coffee, then grumbled under his breath and set it down on the side table and got up to answer the door.

The last person he expected to be standing on his porch was Jimmy Kirk, with red eyes and a basket in one hand. With the other hand, he rubbed at his eyes, before he noticed the sheriff standing there, looking displeased.

"I didn't do anything!" Jimmy said, before Jeff could say anything. "I didn't!"

"What are you doing, Jimmy?" he asked with a sigh. There was rarely a moment where the boy was up to no good, and none of those moments concerned the sheriff. "Does your mother know you're here?"

Jimmy shook his head, and glared off to the side. "She's offplanet."

So that meant he was probably stuck with his uncle. It still didn't explain what Jimmy was doing on his doorstep at barely eight in the morning.

And then Jeff realized that the basket in Jimmy's hand was moving underneath the blanket, and it was _mewling_.

"Why don't you come inside."

Jimmy looked up, and rubbed at his eyes again with his sleeve. "I don't wanna bother you…"

Jeff rolled his eyes and opened the door. "At least bring the basket inside. What's wrong?" He opened the door and Jimmy sidled past him and carefully set the basket down on the living room floor. He pulled out one of the chairs at the small dining room table, and slouched into it.

"Frank said- he said-" Jimmy started sniffling again, and hiccupped. His eyes teared up, and Jeff wondered exactly was it was that Frank had said to set the boy off. Normally, his uncle only elicited anger; Jeff didn't think he'd ever seen Jimmy actually _cry_ before.

"What did Frank say?" Jeff asked, in the most soothing voice he could manage. He hadn't even had his coffee yet!

Jimmy bit his lip, and took a few deep breaths. Jeff grabbed his coffee in the meantime, and kneeled down to lift the blanket.

Inside the basket was a small brown cat, and two kittens who were mewling desperately and crawling around. The mother cat was licking them and trying to direct them to the milk, but it wasn't working. Jeff set down his coffee and carefully moved the tiny bundles of fur to her stomach.

"He said I have to drown them cause I'm allergic to cats butI don't _wanna_!" Jimmy hiccupped again, and Jeff's heart went out to the kid. Jimmy was a pain in his ass and the reason for half the calls to the station, but even he didn't deserve to have Frank set on him.

"So you brought them to me?"

How exactly had Jeff fit into Jimmy's plan? He couldn't arrest Frank for that, not that he probably would have anyways. It was uncommon, yes, but euthanasia was expensive and no doubt Frank felt it was wasted on the kittens.

"I thought…maybe, since they're so little, it was animal abuse or something and…and…" Jimmy trailed off, and sniffled. "Mom wouldn't make me do it but Mom's on Regis 5 and she won't be home for a week and I don't know what to do! It's not _fair_!"

Jeff scratched the cat's chin, and she began to purr. He thought it over, and looked up at Jimmy. The blonde was picking at his jeans, and trying to scrub his cheek with his sleeve.

He came to a decision. "Don't worry about it."

"…what?" Jimmy stared at him. "I thought-"

"Whatever you thought, you were wrong. Now go away, and _please_ try not to destroy anything. I'll talk to Winona when she gets back."

Jimmy just stared at him, plainly shocked. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Nothing that concerns you. Now, _out_." Kindly but firmly, Jeff convinced the boy to leave him and the kittens alone. He seemed skeptical that Jeff wasn't going to do something horrible, but it wasn't like he'd had the most positive relations with the officer since his birth.

* * *

**Fifteen Years Old**

"KIRK!"

Jim let out a whoop, and gunned the engine of the small red motorcycle. It was his latest project, one he'd found in the junk yard. It cost him fifty bucks, and the end result was a motorcycle that had long since passed "street legal".

Not to mention the fact that Jim was only fifteen, and couldn't legally drive anyways.

That had never actually stopped him.

Behind him, a police cruiser pulled off the side road he had just blown by, and turned on the sirens. "Pull over!" The voice of the sheriff and Jim's biggest enemy (when he wasn't saving Jim from another allergy everybody claimed he pulled out of his ass or getting Frank to back off or something) somehow made it through the wind to Jim's ears, and Jim responded by giving the bike even more gas.

That turned out to be a very, very bad decision.

"_Paging Nurse Evans, paging Nurse Evans…"_

"_I'm here to check on James Kirk. He was brought in yesterday afternoon?"_

"_Nurse Evans to the nurses' station, please. Sorry, who are you looking for?"_

"_James Kirk. Motorcycle crash in Riverside."_

"_He's in the room right over there. He has second-degree burns and a mild concussion and a few fractured bones, but he's otherwise okay. Surprising, given how he looked when he came in, but…"_

"_Am I allowed in?"_

"_Are you family or an employer?"_

"_I'm the officer who was chasing him when he crashed. His mother is offworld and asked me to check in on him. If you need verification, I have a number."_

"_That's not necessary. Sheriff Henke, correct?"_

"_Yes."_

"_Go right ahead."_

"_Thank you."_

A curtain shifted, and at the edge of Jim's consciousness, he was aware of a body blocking the dim light from the hallway.

He squeezed his eyes shut as a wave of pain washed over him. He didn't want to be awake anymore!

"James?"

Jim tiredly cracked one eye open. His vision swam, and he snapped it shut.

"Don't try to move, you'll only hurt yourself worse. Are you listening?"

Jim managed to nod, and carefully relaxed when he realized it didn't hurt physically. The pain seemed to be only in his arms and when felt vaguely like his thigh, and the pounding at the front of his skull.

"Good. I doubt you remember anything, but you were in an accident. You were blindsided by a car doing about fifty miles an hour, and you've got burns, fractures, and a concussion. Understand?"

Jim nodded, carefully. That explained the pain. He must be in a hospital, then…

"Frank is claiming you were trying to kill yourself. I sent Starfleet a message when the ambulance came to get you, and they patched me through to your mother. She's on her way home right now. She's really worried about you."

"Nng." Jim tried to convince himself to force out an apology, but he hurt too much to even try.

"I'll be back tonight. You're being released around four this afternoon and you're staying at my house until your mom gets here tomorrow or the day after. Don't try to do anything stupid between then and now."

Sometime after that, the sheriff left, and then a nurse came and, despite his protests, gave him a hypo. He didn't remember anything after that.

The next time he woke up, he was in much less pain, though he was still tired.

Sheriff Henke helped him out to the car, and the ride home to Riverside was in complete silence, not that Jim minded. He had his forehead pressed against the window and his arms carefully arranged in his lap so that the burns wouldn't touch the seat or the door or the center console. The miles of farm fields passed by with the hours, only occasionally broken by a stand of trees and the farmhouse they surrounded.

In what felt to Jim like no time at all, they pulled up in front of the sheriff's modest one-story house in the middle of Riverside. The sheriff spoke only to tell Jim to get out, and once they were in the house to not touch anything. Jim, still woozy and not really caring about much of anything, passed out as soon as he was shown to the spare bedroom.

"_How is he? Is he okay? Where is he?"_

"_He's fine, Winona. He was wearing a helmet and a jacket, and the car only caught the back wheel. He's got greenstick fractures and is gonna be on crutches for the next couple days while the meds work on it, and a mild concussion, though that's nothing new. There are burns on his wrists and lower arms. The medication he's on is making him really tired, but it's one of the only ones he's not allergic to for the burns."_

"_Did he have an allergic reaction at the hospital?"_

"_No, they had his record on file and used the most hypoallergenic stuff they could get their hands on. He might be asleep right now, he's barely left my spare room since he got here yesterday."_

The bedroom door opened a crack, and Jim rolled over to suddenly see a face-full of blonde hair as his mother threw herself to her knees and threw her arms around as much of him as she could grab. "Oh, Jimmy! I was so worried!"

"Mom!" Jim pushed at her until she let go, and sat up. Winona looked exhausted, and the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were more pronounced than normal, but Jim didn't care. As long as she was home, he didn't have to have anything to do with Frank and he had been getting better about breaking the rules, honest! But something about Frank just brought out the inner devil in him, and it always made things that much worse. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-"

"_Jimmy_!"

* * *

**Nineteen Years Old**

Jeff Henke had just pulled out of the Mayflower Diner when he caught sight of Jim Kirk.

That is, caught sight of Jim Kirk being flung across his hood and leaving a trail of blood.

Jim was soon followed by another young man, and Henke hit the brakes.

Jim launched to his feet and tackled the other man, and unleashed a barrage of punches.

Henke resisted the urge to shoot the both of them, and got out. Neither of them even seemed to notice the car they'd gone over was a police cruiser.

Henke stalked over to the two of them and grabbed Jim by his collar. He flung him back, and when the other man went after him, he grabbed him and slammed him against the hood.

"Jim, don't move," he ordered.

Another officer burst out of the diner behind him, and Henke turned to see him pull out his phaser and point it at Jim.

"I wasn't goin' anywhere," Jim complained. He held up his hands and the other officer cuffed him. Blood ran down his cheek and over his jaw, and dripped onto Jim's leather jacket, but he didn't seem too worried about it. In fact, Jeff noted, Jim didn't even seem angry. The man he was cuffing, however, was still screaming and cussing up a storm, and the other officer let Jim alone to come over and help cuff him.

It took a few minutes to force the guy into the back of the cruiser, and Jim obligingly moved over and sat down on the curb while they wrestled with him.

When they finally managed it, Jeff turned to Jim. "Care to explain what happened or should I just haul you downtown?"

Jim shrugged. "I called his little sister pretty a few days ago, and maybe went a bit further, and he happened to find out. He threw the first punch, if that counts for anything."

Henke sighed, and hauled Jim to his feet. "If that's what happened, then you'll be released. If not…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. Back of the car, handcuffs, awkward ride downtown, call home to my mother…except she's offworld, and Frank doesn't give a shit." Jim followed Jeff to the other officer's cruiser, and climbed into the back seat. "Ah, well, just another day, isn't it."

He led the other cruiser to the station, and booked the both of them. Jim was complacent and calm, utterly collected in the face of a jail cell. Jeff was pretty sure it was Jim's first time in the jail itself, despite the sheer amount of stupidity he had gone through as a teen, but Jim was as unconcerned as if he was walking _out_ of the jail, not into it.

The other man, whose name turned out to be Adam Cohen, was still ranting about rape and murder and God-knew-what-else, but a small investigation into the matter seemed to agree with Jim. He'd been minding his own business as he walked down the street, and Adam had attacked him, apparently out of nowhere as Jim didn't know where he had come from and neither did anybody else.

Jeff honestly wasn't sure whether to be happy or angry that he had to let Jim go. He was sure it would do Jim a world of good to spend time behind bars, but at the same time, Jim hadn't (for once) done anything wrong besides kiss on a girl.

"Try not to get into any more brawls, Jim," Jeff said as he dropped the young man off at the old Kirk farmhouse.

"Mom doesn't need to know about this, does she?" Jim asked. He was halfway out of the cruiser, when he had turned back to Jeff. "Since I didn't really do anything and I'm not filing charges. Can she just…not know?"

Jeff agreed to keep quiet on the matter, though they both knew damn well that Winona would find out, sooner or later.

* * *

**Twenty Five Years Old**

"So this is where the great James Kirk grew up," Leonard said. He glanced over the farmhouse, and the cars (and car parts) that littered the side of the house and out into a field, and the old, decrepit fence that lined the property. "Always figured it'd be in more pieces."

"Pieces?" Jim got out of the rented Starfleet car, and jogged up the stairs to the front porch. "I'm just gonna see if Mom is in, and if not, then we'll head into town to find her. What time did you want to be back to the shipyard?"

"About eight. Joanna's going to call the room at eight thirty." McCoy got out of the car and stretched, while Jim headed into the house.

"Mom?"

He heard movement in the living room, and bounded through the kitchen, only to discover Frank, kicking back on the couch with a pile of empty beer cans by his side.

"What the fuck?" Frank squinted at him. "Who the hell are you?"

"Where's my mom?" Jim asked. One hand tightened into a fist, but he held back. Frank had done a lot of shit over the years, but Jim liked to think he was adult enough to resist the urge to beat in Frank's face on principle alone.

"Get the fuck out of my house," Frank said. He stood up, and shoved Jim.

Jim stumbled backwards into the kitchen, and gave up on being the mature one.

McCoy turned around at the sound of another car pulling into the drive behind the black SUV Jim had convinced the shipyard that he needed. It was an old-fashioned police cruiser, nothing like the smooth hovercraft the larger cities were using.

"Lookin' for someone?" He asked. The police officer pulled around the SUV and parked the cruiser. "Don't know if Mrs. Kirk is here, if that's who you want."

A man in his late forties got out of the cruiser, and held out his hand. "Sheriff Jeff Henke. I'm just checkin' on the place, since Winona's offplanet. You here to see Frank?"

"Leonard McCoy. Who's Frank?" McCoy returned the handshake, but the conversation was cut short by a loud thud and equally loud cussing from the house.

McCoy bounded up the steps right behind the sheriff, and found Jim pinning a large man to the kitchen floor.

"JIM!" both men yelled. McCoy grabbed Jim and dragged him off and out onto the porch, while the sheriff dealt with the fat man. He was screaming about breaking and entering and assault, and Jim tried to go through McCoy to get to him.

"Goddammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a referee!" McCoy shoved Jim down the steps and to the car, and thankfully, Jim stopped fighting him. "Who the hell was that?"

"_That_," Jim snarled, "is my uncle."

"Thought the next time you'd be back here was in a coffin," Jeff said a few hours later, after Frank had been convinced that no, he _didn't_ need to beat the shit out of his nephew. "Nobody's seen hide nor hair of you since you lit out four years ago."

"Not for lack of trying," McCoy grumbled. At least by now, he'd learned to carry a small medical bag anywhere he went with Jim; he had patched up the small cut on the bridge of Jim's nose, and had gotten in a hypo just to spite him.

"Yeah, well, Starfleet keeps their officers-in-training busy." Jim stared moodily at his coffee. McCoy hadn't let him order the caffeinated stuff, on the grounds that he ingested enough bad shit on a daily basis that there was no need to make it worse on McCoy's watch.

"So, are you…?" Jeff asked McCoy. He was still finding it hard to believe that Jim had even made it as far as officer training in Starfleet; how had he avoided expulsion?

"Chief medical officer of the USS Enterprise."

"Enterprise, eh? Fine ship. It's a shame she's the only one that made it. What about you, Jim?" Jeff sipped at his (caffeinated) coffee.

"Dunno now," Jim said. Jeff made a sympathetic noise, expecting to hear that Jim had dropped out of Starfleet, like he had every job he'd held over the years in Riverside. "The admiralty aren't sure yet if I get to keep the Enterprise, and if she gets a new captain, I'll probably just go back to training."

"Jim, don't be like that. You'll get her, either you or Spock." McCoy patted Jim on the head like a dog.

"Wait a minute. That wasn't a rumor?" Jeff stared at the sullen young man between him and the doctor. "You're _that_ James Kirk?"

Jim sat up, and pulled back the collar of his leather jacket to reveal the medal he'd pinned to the lining. "Not like there's that many Jim Kirk's in Starfleet." He let go and the jacket fell back into place.

Jeff stared in open shock.

Had Riverside's own Jimmy Kirk, probably the holder of the unofficial most-diverse-rap-sheet award, actually _done_ something with his life that wasn't illegal or immoral?

"_Really_?"

McCoy laughed outright at Jim's offended expression. Jeff simply shook his head, stunned, and finally understood Winona's knowing smile whenever the Nero incident came up in discussion. So she'd always known her Jimmy would manage to make something of himself. Perhaps it was just that Jeff had forgotten the legacy that Jim had to live up to- and Jim's utter inability to take a dare sitting down.


End file.
